


when i see you again

by helenblqckthorn



Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, Feelings, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Magnus writes the bane chronicles, Sad Magnus Bane, Slight Canon Divergence, Supportive Catarina, a whole lot, i made myself emo while writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 04:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenblqckthorn/pseuds/helenblqckthorn
Summary: He tapped the notebook lightly.“Consider this a first installment of everything I want to tell you. I wasn’t sure, but I hoped—if you wanted to be with me, as I want to be with you, you might take this as evidence. Evidence that I am willing to give you something I have never given anyone: my past, the truth of myself. I want to share my life with you, and that means today, and the future, and all of my past, if you want it. If you want me.”or; magnus writes his life for alec. catarina's there to help him.





	when i see you again

**Author's Note:**

> wow i wrote this in like less than two days and it's unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine!!

“You look miserable.”

Cat’s voice cut through the deafening silence that had haunted Magnus for the past few days. He hadn’t even noticed she’d come in, but when he lifted his head now he found himself squinting at the light that was pouring in through the doorway.

Cat stood in the middle with her nurses scrubs on, cutting a dignified silhouette in the bright light. He couldn’t see her face, for the loft was almost in pitch black, but he supposed she wore a wry expression.

“I am not,” Magnus said, holding up a hand to shield the light causing that was him to blink, “miserable.”

“On the contrary,” Catarina said, in a deadpan voice. “Your curtains are blocked by pitch black curtains, your loft smells like you haven’t left it in days, you’re wearing the _maroon_ dressing gown,” she said in the tone of one who was delivering a death sentence.

“I’m pretty sure you ate the cold chinese takeout on the coffee table for breakfast, and—” She pointed to the TV. “You’re watching season one of Project Runway.”

Magnus opted to bury his face into the cushion and make a groaning, pained sound.

Catarina sighed audibly and walked over to the couch where he was laying. He felt the pressure of the couch cushion shift as she perched on the edge and ran her hand gently through is hair, an almost motherly gesture. Then again, Cat was the most motherly friend one could probably have.

“What’s this all about?” She asked him, gently. “I haven’t seen you this upset since—”

Catarina faltered, and Magnus turned his head slightly to look up at her suspiciously. “Since?”

“Since a while ago,” she finished, and he dropped whatever was bothering her.

Magnus sighed and refused to dwell on the miserable reason he was in this state, like he had been since that night. “You’ve probably already heard the rumours.”

“Actually, I’ve been holed up in the hospital for almost two days straight,” she said, dryly. “I didn’t have time to gossip. Especially since you’re my number one gossip source.”

Magnus managed a half hearted smile, and Cat’s frown deepened. “Where’s that Shadowhunter boy of yours?”

Something must have shifted in Magnus’s expression that he was desperately trying to conceal, and Catarina had always been too good at reading him. “Oh Magnus. How bad?”

“Really bad,” he said, voice muffled by the couch cushion. “Never see each other again bad.”

As if on cue, his phone bleeped, signalling a text. He groaned, far too familiar with the usual texts. (“Just speak to him.” “He’s not looking too good man.” “I’m sorry.”) Magnus threw a cushion off the floor at it. Cat raised her eyebrows at him

“Tell me,” Catarina said gently, and something in Magnus cracked. He told her, in an emotionless tone, everything that had happened following the Mortal War. How they’d been happy, on vacation, until Magnus dodged one too many questions on the topic of his past. How Alec had been beginning to grow impatient. How they’d seen Camille—Cat’s fingers had twitched then—and it had opened up too many questions he didn’t want to answer and too many wounds.

And then, the fights throughout the period of Jace being missing, about the very touchy subject of immortality. And that it always came to the same conclusion: Magnus deflecting, Alec becoming angry. How he’d been disappearing more often, until one day, a random vampire approached him with a message from Camille that had made his stomach drop.

He hadn’t wanted to believe it, at first. He’d thought it was a joke. But his feet carried him, along with his doubt, to the subway station. And he’d been there, just like Camille had said.

The memories from that night were a blur of guilt, anger, and sorrow. But what stood out to Magnus, what was behind his eyes every time he closed them, was the shattered look on Alec’s face before he’d walked away.

Magnus had returned to his loft after the day was over, as promised, and the sight of Alec’s key on his coffee table had made him grip the door until his knuckles were white. All the things that had made the loft home, were gone. Alec’s awful dirty boots kicked off by the door, one of his many books face down on the kitchen table, a sweater slung over the couch, were all gone.

He’d refused to go into the bedroom, instead camping out on the couch that Alec didn’t use and staying there for almost four days straight. It was good to take his mind off of it, just eating bad food and watching crappy television. That was, until, the voicemails and texts started pouring in.

Magnus managed to successfully ignore the ones from Alec’s now-annoying friends, but the ones his ex-boyfriend—it hurt, physically, when he thought of it like that—were the worst.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“I won’t give up hoping.”

He managed to get through most of the story without letting it affect him, but when it came to remembering the gut wrenching feeling of trying to go to sleep that night but just feeling an empty space next to him and the scent that was uncannily Alec on his pillow, his voice broke.

Catarina stayed silent once he finished, and took his hand. They stayed like that for a few minutes, until she spoke.

“As much as you might not want to hear this, I think you need to hear me out.”

Magnus looked at her grouchily. “If we’re going to Taki’s or something to meet with Raphael so he can scoff at me, it’s a no.”

She snorted, but subsided quickly. “No, nothing like that. I think—” she hesitated. “I think your Shadowhunter boy—”

“Alec,” Magnus corrected, dully.

“I think you need to cut him a little slack.”

Magnus jerked upright. “What?” He sputtered. “I thought you were on my side!”

“First of all, that’s childish, and second of all, hear me out.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but saw her expression and decided against it.

“Think of how he feels.”

“How he feels?!”

“Magnus.”

“Right.”

“You’ve got a new warlock boyfriend which is all very new to you, he whisks you off to Paris and god knows elsewhere. You’re finally getting to know each other, and you discover that he’s not keen on opening up. That’s okay, you tell yourself, but as time wears on, you find yourself knowing less and less about him. He may as well be just a casual friend, with all you know about him. It seems unnerving, and then all of a sudden his ex girlfriend is back and fills your head with manipulative ideas and self doubt.”

“You stumble upon her again, and she promises a way for you and him to be together. In a fit of desperation, with your parabatai missing, you go to her. Instead of offering what you wanted, she offers for him to become mortal. You consider it, then decline it, but keep going back to her because she’s one of the only people who knows him and can tell you about him. It all ends badly though, and he breaks up with you.”

Magnus looked at her, stunned, and she raised an eyebrow in return. “That’s what I got from the story. Of course, that doesn’t mean it was good to think of taking your immortality away, but he’s mortal, and young. They do foolish and stupid things, but those mistakes shouldn’t last a lifetime. He seems sorry, from the voicemails.”

He found his voice. “What do you suggest I do?”

“I have no intention of telling you what to do. What do you think you should do?”

There was no guilt tripping in Catarina’s voice, only practicality. “I don’t know.” He murmured, admitting what he hadn’t been able to admit to himself until now.

“You have the right to be hurt. It was stupid of him. But Magnus, I’d never seen you that happy in a long time. And if you continue like this, you’re just going to throw that chance at happiness away.”

Magnus lay there, thinking silently. After a several minutes, he shuffled on the sofa and sat up, running a hand through his untidy hair. “Can you get me a pen and notebook from my office?”

***

It was a sort of spontaneous idea, but those were the ones Magnus found worked out best for him. He dragged himself out of the musty living area and into the office, then sat down at his table. The chair was his favourite, high backed and one that span around—

He shook his head and stopped procrastinating, tapping the biro pen and looking down at the ordinary notebook in front of him. Cat had gone to work, once she’d seen he was determined to do something, and the loft was eerily silent.

Chairman Meow was probably sulking in one of the guest rooms, Alec had been completely soft on him and used to give him extra treats, and was clearly missing the Shadowhunter as much as Magnus.

The empty page loomed before him. What to write, what to say, Magnus hadn’t found himself at a loss for words very often but this was one of those times.

He hesitated, and then started to write. Dear Alec…

Magnus found himself writing a letter, of sorts. He wrote an introduction, explaining what this was and why he wanted to give it to him. A few short, but important, stories of his life. If Alec wanted them. If he would take him back.

He didn’t really know what he was doing, but he knew that it was on the right path to something. Hope, maybe.

The first story popped into his mind immediately, and he smiled to himself as he started a new page. He regretted mentioning being banned from Peru in front of Jace that one time, but it was an embarrassing (if not entertaining) that he felt was a good place to start. No messy emotions.

Except Magnus found himself reliving a night of heartbreak, wandering the streets of Puno. And he found himself remembering Ragnor with a painful ache in his chest, and every sentence he wrote about Ragnor hurt to write.

All the walls he had carefully stacked up around each memory he broke down with what felt like a blow to the chest. He finished that one with a shaky sigh, placing his pen down for a moment and stretching his arms out.

The next was easier; Marie Antoinette. Magnus often whipped this story out at dinner parties to impress, but he always left out Axel, as that was more private and the guilt of knowing Axel probably died trying to save the queen and king would haunt him.

Still, he wrote. It was fun to remember the fashion and the fun times and the adrenaline of that night, but not so much to remember Claude and Marie, and the twisted vampires who most likely killed them.

Magnus remembered Edmund Herondale, and the tragic tale that followed him, and found himself wanting to open up to Alec about the injustice of it all. Alec would understand. There was nothing he could do now, and it was rather pointless, but every time he started a new sentence he could hear the tortured screams of Edmund, and he nearly snapped his pen in half, opening the floodgates of the memories and emotions.

It was also the first time he met Camille. What she had done had left a wound too deep to heal until about 80 years later, and Magnus remained brief on their meeting, then stopped. He stopped, and went back to add in what he really had been feeling. He wasn’t going to hold back. He wasn’t going to calcify.

The tale of James Herondale was a more complicated one, but an important one nevertheless. Magnus scribbled about their first meeting, where James had tried to climb Nelson’s column and was spectacularly drunk.

Writing about Tessa, Will and their family was hard. But it wasn’t as sad as Magnus had previously thought. He found himself grinning at the thought of the banter between them, and the pang of emotion when he realised Will had told of how Magnus had helped him to his children and appreciated it every day since.

After finishing that story, he let out a breath and dropped his pen. He’d been writing for approximately 3 hours.

As he let his gaze slip to the notebook he wondered what to write about next. He let his thoughts stray to Raphael and his story, and then a thought occurred to him. Why not start at the place where that had all started?

And so he found himself writing about how the Hotel Dumort came about, the Wall Street crash and the almost crisis that went hand in hand with it.

He shuddered at the thought of becoming like Aldous, something he swore to himself would never, and became glad he was letting some of his walls done. If he kept all his memories to himself, they’d turn to dust and so would he.

At that realisation he paused. Magnus had finally struck on the reason he was writing. Part of it was to be honest and completely open with Alec, and part of it was not wanting to fade along with his memories.

With that in mind, he continued the story. He remembered Alfie, who had begged him on a windowsill to wipe his mind clean of depressing memories. Something niggled at the back of his mind when he wrote that, and his brow furrowed as he felt like he was forgetting something. But that was impossible—he had impeccable memory.

He shrugged it off and continued, but the thought still bothered him as he wrote.

The next was the story of Raphael Santiago, and Magnus braced himself for the emotions that would follow writing it.

He could picture clearly in a minds eye the desperation that was in Raphael’s eyes the first night, and the way Magnus had had to drag him away from his death, while Raphael struggled against him towards it.

Magnus blinked back the burning in his eyes when he remembered when Raphael reunited with his family, when Ragnor and Raphael had met. Magnus knew he still visited the descendants of his mortal family every Sunday, posing as a boy visiting church.

Raphael would kill him if he ever found out he’d shared the story with anyone else, but Magnus knew Alec could be trusted with this sort of information. Not, he thought bitterly, with other things, but they would have to build that up again between them. No secrets.

He paused after that story, slightly weary at the amount of emotion it had taken to write all of that. Magnus had covered all the way up to the 70’s and 80’s he was willing to share at the moment, but the fuzzy feeling that surrounded the 80’s whenever he thought of them appeared again, and he frowned.

The door opened, and Magnus presumed it was Catarina that had come to check up on him again.

“Cat?” He called, and she poked her head around the door. “Yeah?”

He frowned again and looked down at his page, tapping his pen against the wood of his desk. “Do you remember what happened in the 1980’s? I’m trying to remember if there was anything important I should write down, but I can’t seen to remember most of it.”  


There was a silence. Magnus looked up at her expression, and before she schooled it back into neutral interest, there was a flash of fear that he caught.

He set down his pen. “Cat…”

She sighed, seeing the uselessness in concealing whatever it was from him. “You can’t remember because I took most memories from the 80’s from you.”

Magnus reeled back in shock. “What? Why would you do that?”

“Because you asked me to.”

He stared at her. A sinking feeling had come upon him, and he recalled the troubling memory of Alfie imploring him to wipe his mind.

“What happened,” he asked monotonously, dreading the answer.

Cat hesitated. “It’s probably best if I give them back, rather than explain. Only if you want them. though.”

After a moment’s pause, he nodded. Whatever it was couldn’t be that bad 30 years later, could it?

She placed her hands on each of his temples gently and he closed his eyes. Magnus began to feel the tingle of magic when suddenly the memories washed over him in their full terrible capacity and he could do nothing but relive them.

The stench of rotting blood came upon him as images flashed before him.

The Wall Street crash, Camille had been the one to warn him, to look out for him. It had puzzled him and torn at him _why was she doing this_.

There were werewolves who wanted him to speak to Camille, the city was in crisis. And then he was walking up stairs, opening the door and seeing her, but it wasn’t at all what it should have been, she was all over the place and grinning like a madman and there was cocaine on the floor, and a blackout had happened and all the vampires were going crazy there were tens of bodies lying almost ripped open and he had to get to Camille he had to but he didn’t want to—

Blood on the floor, blood in the air and vampires everywhere recovering from addiction, the sight of her made his heart clench and it was almost unbearable.

Then she was saying things, incredibly weak but saying things that went under his skin and pierced his heart like it hadn’t been before and he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t live with it and he was begging Catarina to erase them then—

Nothing.

He gasped and his eyes snapped open, and he pushed away from Catarina to get to the window and threw it open, breathing irregularly and taking deep lungfuls of night air in. Cat came up behind him and put her hand on his back in silent support.

“I hate her.” Magnus muttered.

“If it’s any consolation, so do I,” she said quietly.

They stood there for a while. Then:

“Ragnor warned me when we started dating,” Magnus said, shaking his head ruefully, and pretended not to notice the way Catarina’s hand stiffened. “Should’ve listened to the old grouch.”

“Mmm.”

He made his way shakily back to the chair and stared at the blank page before him, and picked up the pen.

***

He’d managed to get about halfway through the narrative, when he tasted salt in his mouth and realised he was silently crying.

Magnus put his head in his hands and his shoulder shook with the effort of keeping in the tears, but to no avail. They came out in huge, gasping sobs and all he could do was clutch his hair and cry.

At some point he was aware of Catarina turning him to slump against her shoulder and holding him there as he wept, running a hand up and down his back and murmuring intelligible comforting words to him.

He hadn’t cried in so long, so the sensation was almost new to him, the burning of his eyes, the aching of his head and the utter hopelessness he felt, remembering everything.

“I’m okay,” he said, after a while, rubbing wetness away from his eyes. “I’m fine.”

Catarina took his hand, he sniffed a few times, and then she lead him up away from the desk. “I think that’s enough for now,” she said. “Finish it tomorrow.”

That night, he slept in one of Alec’s sweater that he had found stuffed in the back of his wardrobe, and for once, he didn’t feel utterly alone, going to bed. Maybe that was because Chairman Meow was sleeping on his head, but Magnus likened to the idea that it was the sweater.

The next day, he got up, didn’t eat cold pizza for breakfast, and went straight into the office. He wrote out the rest of that experience in one long flow, with a clear head and mindset.

It took him some time, but he finished. Then, after pondering on what to write next, he decided (rather sappily) that he wanted to write about the day he’d realised he was in love with Alec.

Remembering the small things Alec had done to impact his life was the best and the worst. The mornings he’d wake up to coffee, and Alec would smile sheepishly and hand him a mug, the day he went to Taki’s and Alec had jumped up and protected Magnus without any hesitation, his laugh, his smile, the way he’d tuck his hair behind his ear when he was slightly nervous.

It took a lot of willpower not to start sobbing again all over the paper, but he managed it. And they wouldn’t have been awful tears, they would have been emotional ones. When you’re filled with such a powerful emotions it springs tears to your eyes.

He smiled as he finished that one, thinking of the moment where Alec decided he wanted to spend his birthday with Magnus and in turn, Magnus has been filled with said emotion and kissed him.

He hoped to have conveyed how much Alec meant to Magnus on the page.

A banging on the door rudely interrupted his thoughts. God, Magnus thought, what was it now?

He got up and walked towards the obnoxious noise, and swung the door open. Isabelle Lightwood was standing on the other side, her face red from anger and her hair all over the place. She opened her mouth to say something, but Magnus said: “No.” And slammed the door shut.

Her shouts followed him back to the office. Things along the lines of “If you don’t back here right now, Magnus Bane, I’m breaking your door down!”

“Good luck with that!” He was tempted to shout back, but casted a silencing charm instead.

Isabelle’s fierceness, however, gave him an idea. He recalled how fierce Maryse was at her age, and how easily influenced she was. And although he dreaded to think of it, he thought The Circle was a good place to start the next memoir.

That terrible night, where the werewolf child became blind because Magnus had been too late, where he’d had a sword slide through his body and shake at the shock of it. When Stephen Herondale, a man that Magnus would’ve thought trustworthy, along with his gang slew the entire Whitelaw family.

It truly had been horrific. It had taken Magnus a few weeks to get over that, and a few glasses of hard liquor.

Then Joceyln Fairchild had turned up whilst he was with Tessa, and the start of something new had begun when she’d shown him her little daughter, Clary.

Clary had had her memories taken that night, though she lived on, unaware, until her sixteenth birthday.

Those sequence of events lead him to Alec. Without Alec, he wasn’t sure where he’d be right now. But he knew for sure what he was going to do next.

Their first date had nearly been a complete disaster. With spilling drinks onto shirts, awkward silences, going to a restaurant where Shadowhunters were as welcome as a hoard of wasps, but it had ended on the best note possible, and Magnus was so grateful for that werewolf that had gotten out of control.

The ghost of Alec’s lips on his, his hand against Magnus’s cheek, his hand against Magnus’s chest—

“Can I see you again?” Alec had said.

Magnus had lain on the floor, gazing up into the depths of his dark eyes. He didn’t know what he was doing. But he knew that he wanted to see Alexander again. He knew he wanted to take him out on a proper date. He knew a lot of things he shouldn’t have by the first date.

“Friday night would be fine,” he had said, and Alec had smiled a smile that lit up Magnus’s chest with hundreds of fireworks.

He was wrong when he said Alec wouldn’t break his heart, Magnus thought, closing the notebook.

But the course of true love never did run smooth. What was love without a heartbreak along the way?

**Author's Note:**

> please leave comments and kudos if you liked it!!
> 
> hmu at my [tumblr](http://catarinalosss.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/panlilychen)


End file.
